Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) In his work “De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa” (On the Natural Variety of Mankind, 1775) based mainly on cranial measurements, called light-skinned people as Caucasian. Blumenbach's definition cites two reasons for his choice--the maximal beauty of people from this small region, and the probability that humans were first created in this area – Blumenbach believed that Homo Sapiens had been created in a single region and had then spread over the globe. Because of Blumenbach's obsession with Georgian "beauty," the word "Caucasian" became a "scientific" synonym for "white." «Caucasian variety. I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; ... The Georgians belong to the most beautiful nations in the world. Everywhere, at any place, there can be seen tall men and slender women with noble faces, attractive features and large beautiful eyes........., Georgians are considered to be among the bravest and the most honest nations in the world; like all other Caucasian nations, they are also hospitable and reliable, as reliable, as their sabers are, and as swift and flexible, as their stallions, courageous in warfare and kind and soft-hearted at their homes. That stock displays... the most beautiful form of the skull, from which, as from a mean and primeval type, the others diverge...Besides, it is white in color, which we may fairly assume to be the primitive color of mankind and because ... in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones of mankind.» The reason the Caucasus had such an attraction to Blumenbach and other contemporaries was because of its proximity to Mount Ararat, where according to the Biblical account, Noah's Ark, eventually landed after the Deluge. Blumenbach believed that the original humans were light-skinned, that the Caucasians had retained this whiteness as a constant, and that darkness of skin was a sign of change from the original. The tribe of Japheth was supposed to have originated in the Caucasus, then spread north and westwards.
The Georgian skull Blumenbach discovered in 1795, which he used to hypothesize origination of Europeans from the Caucasus. |
